Thursday, September 3, 2015

Immortality's Chain of thought (Oh, Castilleja)

Ms. Mary Joe Castilleja has hair like a prairie fire,
lives alone in a second story apartment out back
the 7-Eleven
& every morning can be seen
walking out of town
on the edge
of the street,
merges with
the shimmer
on the surface
of the desert

Some say she was married once,
but now all she has is an indian paintbrush
she keeps in a back pocket
of her just right jeans & a bucket
of discount terra-cotta flower pots
she bought on sale at Jim's
one holy day

while all the prim roses were coming
down the crooked steps of the little white church
full of God & gossip;

she's more a roadside tangle,
a wild flower that knows a pew can be just
another windowbox, on a mortgaged porch

she has a place,
a wood crate turned on its side,
out among the cactus - where she ties her shirt up
& paints

wetting the tip with her tongue
& dipping it in wildflowers,
for the natural color,
no one notices
as they pass,

but she collects woodie stationwagons
& minivans with license plates
from far away places like Alaska
or New Hampshire,

all the vacation weary drivers
flock like checkerspot butterflies just wanting a nip
of a petal or cream sac,
promising affections
usually reserved for Spanish botanist, promising to whisk her off
to exotic locales like NW Russia,

for the climate of course --

she just laughs
and smashes another flower pot
gathering the sharpest shards
to give them life,
in purple, red-orange
& on cloudy days,
green - dark as her own
roots

36 comments:

What a vivid picture you have painted, X. It sounds as if she has found her place and calling in life, whether or not it be our own. Perhaps someday her paintings will be discovered & she WILL have that immortality of which she never dreamed!

This is vividly beautiful, X, absolutely gorgeous writing. I can see her, and so admire her spirit, love her dipping her brush in wildflowers......LOVE the prim roses coming down the church steps. One of my faves of yours.

Inspiring.. X.. yes.. inspiring.. i spend some time under the Interstate 10 bridge Gulf loop boardwalk at the Casinos in Biloxi.. last year.. talking to some combat veteran wandering Jesus' who were currently living under the bridge.. there was no doubt they had fully escaped culture.. i could relate to everything these Jesus' said.. and then there was no doubt that i finally had fully arrived.. smiles.. i never pass a Jesus on the side of the road.. without giving him at least a dollar for a beer or whatever.. after all HE earned it...:)

i like her. a lot. she sees things that others overlook - there is a beautiful wildness about her as well and a being comfortable in her own skin - no wonder that people feel attracted - and others may look a bit down on her - unconventional as she is - ha- it takes a lot to be that independent no matter the circumstances - i wish i could be a bit like her

S stole our thunder by mentioning all the choice lines, but hey, this is one of the wildest, most colorful of your poems that I have read. If Kerouac was an "outlaw of the sensorium", as I attempt to be, & I consider you to be, then this poetic protagonist of yours is outrider extraordinaire.

I love the sense of the slightly-mad-artist, like van gogh, happy with her paints and her nature and her (self-inflicted?) misery.... a fabulously vivid portrait. She stands tall among the weeds on the roadside.

This is such a great portrait of someone who has found her path in life.. I like someone that has gained that level of independence... and somehow I think the description of how she makes something new from the shards is a reflection on what she has done with herself.. maybe we all need to create something beautiful from shards.

What a wonderful tangle is Ms. Mary Joe Castilleja, and in a strange way I envy her peace."all the vacation weary driversflock like checkerspot butterflies just wanting a nipof a petal or cream sac, promising affectionsusually reserved for Spanish botanist, promising to whisk her offto exotic locales like NW Russia...I am glad that she laughs, knowing as she does, the nature of things.

Came by to see what you did with your notes ~ such a vivid portrait you painted of the street artist ~ so colorful. Your writing style, especially depictions of urban characters, reminds me of a poet who no longer blogs ...

I like her - a lot. Dipping her brush in wildflowers...wow. I imagine she is the wonderfully comfortable in her own skin kind of person that always blooms where she is planted. This poem of yours is so visual and descriptive, I feel I could look out my window and see her, sitting there, painting and turning our plain humdrum street into a place of amazement. Wonderful.

I really think that's the way to live, with/alongside nature and being one's real self. Problem is that it is very hard to be self-sufficient. Money is the root of all evil and that's for sure! And I have gone beyond caring what others think!

In the poem before this you give a profile of the terrain of self, learned slowly and by tripping over ever rough spot, falling, and scraping skin, bursting balloons...here you paint a woman on verbal porcelain who is more than a woman, or a self, a sorceress, a symbol, a sphinx in a most sphinx-like setting with a dusty undercoating of American Gothic. Both superb portraits of states of being and moments in time from which we long to avert our eyes even as we stare, that we try to drop yet carry anyway. Fine work--deceptively easy to read.